Editors' Note

• Author: Blake M. Mensing - Addie Haughey
• Position: Editors-in-Chief
• Pages: 1-1

1SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LAW & POLICY

As the ongoing battle in the United States Congress over

climate change legislation demonstrates, a legislature

or parliament is not always the key to progressing sus-

tainable devel opment strategies. It is often in the courts where

progress can b e made, and it is this exact idea that our staff

endeavored to explore in our fall issue.

SDLP’s work on this topic has brought to light a numbe r

of unexpected realities. For example, South Asia and Africa are

doing more than we previously believed to prol iferate sustain-

able development, with constitutional guarantees of the right to

life and a clean environment common within legal systems in

those regions. Canada, on the other hand, is not as green as we

once thought, with its provincial system building barriers to sus-

tainable development unique to that nation.

On the home front, man y e nvironmental lawye rs were

thrilled to see so many cases dealing with sustainability issues

go up to the US Supreme Court in the l ast few terms, but Pro-

fessor May paints a much bleaker picture, laying out the true

impacts those new precedents ma y have dealt. One of our stu-

dent writers points to another domestic strategy—take the victo-

ries we do have in the US courts and spread them far and wide.

This shows that even in the face of little Congressional progress

and negative precedent, the courts can be used by creative and

innovative litigators to push the envelope.

An additional article covers the September proceedings of

a c onference titl ed Transformati on: The Road to a 21st Cen-

tury Ene rgy Infrastructure Impediments and Opportunities fo r

Renewable Energy Deployment sponsored by the ABA Section

on Environment and Energy and by SDLP and the WCL Envi-

ronmental Law Society, held at the Washington College of Law.

Our hope is for this issue to broaden the discussion going

on among litigators at every level and to encourage them to look

outside their own system and their own paradigm t o see how

sustainabl e developm ent driven litigatio n is happening—and

succeeding—everywhere.

Addie Haughey Blake M. Mensing

eDitor-in-chief eDitor-in-chief

eDitorS’ note

FEATURES:

19 | the importance of regulating

tranSbounDary grounDwater aQuiferS

by Emily Brophy

30 | environmental litigation StanDing

after maSSachuSettS v. epa: center for

biological DiverSity v. epa

by Andy Hosaido

39 | iS the international court of JuStice the

right forum for tranSbounDary water

pollution DiSputeS? by Kate Halloran

40 | the international court of JuStice’S

treatment of “SuStainable Development”

anD implicationS for argentina v.

uruguay by Lauren Trevisan

50 | tenSion between hyDroelectric

energy’S benefitS aS a renewable anD

itS Detrimental effectS on enDangereD

SpecieS by Janet M. Hager

58 | thirD party petitionS aS a meanS

of protecting voluntarily iSolateD

inDigenouS peopleS by Nickolas M. Boecher

64 | precautionary principle in the

international tribunal for the law of the

Sea by Yoona Cho

73 | litigation preview by Jessica B. Goldstein

75 | worlD newS by Nick Alarif and Kate Halloran

77 | booK review: aDJuDicating climate

change

Edited by William C.G. Burns and Hari M. Osofsky

Reviewed by Scott M. Richey and Karla O. Torres